Day I

Keep the damn lights off! We're taking away your rights in here!

If you ever happen by the Ashe County Courthouse on a Monday around 2 p.m. and see the Commissioners trotting up the stairs to a tiny, dark conference room next to the Register of Deeds Office on the second floor, you might be thinking they're looking for a dark closet where they can play spin the bottle. 

But you'd be wrong. They're assembling to conduct the county's business in the middle of the day while all good taxpayers are slaving away to pay their bills. Commissioners call it the "work session."

These five elected officials will emerge 95 minutes later, go upstairs to the third floor courtroom and then have the "official meeting" where they formally rubber stamp the public's work they've just completed in the conference room.

Case in point: the February 7, 2011 Commissioners work session. This is from the official minutes of that work session, lost in a bullet point list of issues presented by county manager Dan McMillan:

Ashe County Board of Commissioner Minutes

We're certainly not surprised the Commissioners decided to summarily strip women working for the county of their reproductive rights -- these five are Republicans and stripping women of their rights seem to be a popular pastime for GOP-controlled governments everywhere. You can read a good primer here on Rep. Paul "Skippy" Stam, R-Wake, who sent a deceptive letter to all 100 counties to start this latest crusade to crush women's rights.

We'd at least think Commissioners would have the kahunas to place this issue on the public agenda, consider comments from those they supposedly represent, and take a real vote on it in the light of day so we all know where they stand.

But we know where they stand: huddled in the conference room on the second floor with the lights off molesting women's rights. 

Cowards.

A fine time in the land of plenty

No need to tune in to cable news for misery and struggle in Japan.

A new study released today shows nearly 1 in 5 in Ashe have problems just putting food on the table.

The Winston-Salem Journal last weekend highlighted the plight of the hungry in northwest North Carolina --  and there's a lot more people with empty stomachs than anyone wants to admit: 1 in 4 Americans are worried about having enough money to eat.

Shameful.

Just clowing around... on your dime

We were mighty pleased this week to see that state Sen. Dan Soucek finally selected the winner of his Weird Law of the Day contest on Facebook.
Apparently, when the District's freshman senator isn't busy working to disenfranchise the poor and elderly or busting up the public education system, he's been studiously reading an Internet list of stupid laws.
Now that he's all caught up on his reading list, he's moved along to collecting recipes. His request today: favorite chip and salsa recipes.
Eh, what the heck. We'll share a few recipes if it keeps Soucek away from filing more asinine legislation for Art Pope Inc.

People's Revolution complete

The Ashe Tea Drinkers have completed their takeover of the county's Republican Party after what we reckon must have been something akin to a Baptist church splitting earlier this month at the county convention.
Moderates offered a slate of officers which were turned back and forced to withdraw their names hours before delegates convened. The schizm has forced out moderate Republicans who are quietly making known that they'll have no part of the new radical agenda being promoted in their name.
Re-elected "GOP" party chairman John Wheeler, who shares Newt Gingrich's fondness for Chairman Mao quotes, offered a hearty renunciation of the grand ole Republican Party, according to the account in the Ashe Mountain Times:

"Politics is war without blood," Wheeler said. "The Republican establishment wants to control the people at the grassroots. They want foot soldiers who take orders and now there are some people who say, ‘wait a minute, we didn’t sign on to be foot soldiers, we signed on to promote ideas that we believe in. We want candidates that express what we believe in.”

Just last October, Wheeler was singing a tune of unity, declaring Republicans and Tea Drinkers were one in the same.
We suppose taking over the asylum puts things in a different perspective.

Are we waiting for our Tahir moment?

Al Jazeera seems to be the one of the few sources drawing parallels between what's going on in the Middle East and here at home. This essay offers some insight into the global changes afoot.

Jobs? That's just luxury!

The new GOP General Assembly budget slashers have stumbled upon the hog that's got to be slaughtered ... jobs, job training and job recruitment.
Didn't somebody campaign on bringing real jobs to NC last year? Oh, that's the dudes proposing cutting jobs, job training and job recruitment. That makes perfect sense.

Grab your partner, do si do

Looks like everybody in North Carolina's congressional delegation has found a sitting partner for tonight's State of the Union address. Well, almost everybody. Rep. Patrick McHenry reckons he'll just find any old seat and Sen. Burr didn't disclose his reservations to the press.

Rep. Virginia Foxx reported she'd be sitting with Rep. Yvette Clark, a Democrat from Foxx's hometown, Brooklyn, NY.

Half the interest tonight will be on whether everybody still applauds and boos on the same page as their party. Maybe they'll have cue cards for the Congress?

And so it goes...

Just when we expected Jonathan Jordan to go all Reagan Revolution on us, he reads from former Democratic Virginia Gov. Doug Wilder's blog after he's sworn in on Sunday afternoon.

Gabriel warming up his horn...

Birds dropping out the sky were bad enough. (Luckily the USDA has taken the fall for this freaky phenomena in South Dakota, at least.)

And then Keith Olbermann stunned us last night by leaving the airwaves.

Now, they tell us we'll have two suns in the sky as early as next year.

Maybe the end will come quicker than we thought.

Planning? That's a novel idea...

Our brethren to the south last week discussed planning for growth along U.S. 421 in the Deep Gap community. Leaders in Watauga County are already looking toward how water and sewer infrastructure could be expanded to meet the growth that 's likely to happen in the corridor, especially with the planned widening of U.S. 221 to West Jefferson in the coming decade.

Watauga took time to develop an impressive planning report two years ago that identifies the opportunities and challenges facing the county in the future.

Ashe County leaders don't like to hear it, but they could learn something from their neighbors. Ashe has no such planning tool. A blue ribbon panel appointed to study land use issues three years ago completed an extensive study of the county's needs but Commissioners shelved all that hard work without so much as a thank you.

Six years ago, Ashe Commissioners were asked by Watauga counterparts to participate in a regional water cooperative with the Deep Gap area as a focus. Both counties could have benefited from such a regional effort. Alas, Ashe leaders gave this offer the cold shoulder and now Watauga will go it alone.

With the current lull in economic activity and the likely dead stop in any progressive policies from Watauga Commissioners following the November election, now is the time for Ashe to actually plan for the future. When the local economy gets going again, there will be no time for planning, only regrets for time squandered.

Scoff not, lest ye be scoffed

Franklin Graham is apparently the new self-appointed policeman of prayer, alleging the speakers at the Arizona memorial service last week "scoffed" at Jesus.

If by scoff, the luxury-jet-flying, Sarah-Palin-pal means to laugh at and jeer with contempt and derision, Graham should rest easy knowing we only scoff at his hypocrisy.

Where Would Jesus Fly?

More importantly, would he take a seat in coach?

If Rev. Franklin Graham is flying with him, it's first-class all the way.

Graham's Boone empire Samaritan's Purse unveiled plans Tuesday night to build a new hanger at the Wilkes County Airport where the "non-profit" relief agency will house its new Falcon 900.

Price tag for a used Falcon 900? $21 million - $40 million. (It was the plane of choice for Enron's Ken Lay.)  Before you start thinking Franklin is using this luxury corporate jet for nonstop deliveries of shoeboxes to children at speeds approaching 0.85 mach, think again: it seats 19 people and ain't used for cargo. But it can fly 4,500 miles nonstop (For reference, that'll get you from Charlotte to Berlin, Germany).

God forbid having to mingle with the heathens at an airport during a layover!

"You must be Igor."

Cryin' John Boehner and his fellow ministers of silly walks got things back on track today with a time-wasting nine-hour debate and useless vote to repeal health care coverage for millions of Americans.

We knew our own Dutchess of Foscoe, Virginia Foxx, couldn't stand in the shadows for too long without offering some of her own homespun wisdom on the non-issue of the day.

She didn't disappoint.

Foxx took to the House floor early this morning and supposed that the sickest one percent of Americans take up 25 percent of the health care dollars in this country. (We fully expected she'd prescribe a heartfelt long walk in the woods with a short rope for these poor ailing souls, but she surprised us.) Instead, she reckoned that the FDA ought to just relax its rules on growing laboratory organs so we could just whip up new hearts and bladders and spleens as needed!

Under Ms. Foxx's FrankensteinCare plan, if your sitting on the couch and feeling your ticker might just give out, you can run on down to the Wal-Mart and get yourself a replacement one, maybe even one of those fancy ones with a vest and battery packs like Dicky Cheney wears.

Hmm. And who is going to pay for any of this? Wasn't that the point of passing health care reform? No one can afford freakin' health care in this country. And even if you could afford it, if you've got a pre-existing condition such as a hang nail, nobody's gonna issue an insurance policy.

Sadly, Foxx's FrankensteinCare speech was, like the entire health care repeal debate and vote, just an exercise in grandstanding and hypotheticals. Foxx has her Congressional health care package and isn't going to support making health care affordable for anyone and she certainly isn't going to support increasing funding for research (including regenerative medicine).

Yuan for Me, Yuan for You

In advance of President Hu's visit to Washington, we've been reading up on China's economy so we're prepared to at least appear intelligent if the Chinese delegation finds its way to these hills.

The comparisons have already been made between China of the 2010s and Japan of the 1980s. And we all know what happened to Japan in the 1990s and the lost decade. Perhaps more remarkable are the comparisons of China of today to the United States of five years ago. The U.S. certainly hasn't experienced the double-digit growth rates that China is now purportedly enjoying but there are plenty of warning signals that our Communist friends to the east now suffer from many of the ailments that afflicted the Capitalists here -- loose credit, an overheated real estate market, unsustainable building levels and a working class that's so poorly paid that it relies on government subsidies to prop up domestic demand for goods.

The Telegraph this week laid out a startling picture of China's economy and the reasoning why many hedge fund managers are going bearish on China's short-term future. This al-Jazeera report on one of the many new "mega ghost towns" popping up in China also paints a picture of what looks to be an unsustainable pattern.

All this isn't to say that we can all run into the streets shouting "U.S.A." As a recent report from the Carnegie Endowment (which by the way is a good primer on Chinese economics) points out, all the statistics on China's economic growth is manufactured by the state so the veracity of these figures warrant close scrutiny. It's also worth remembering that those "experts" now going bearish on China's future are the same experts who led us down the primrose path to the Great Recession.

But if the warning signals are true, if Beijing's great economic engine is going to sputter and stall, what does all this mean for the global economy and our own fragile recovering economy? Economists interviewed by The UK's Telegraph predict that if China's GDP slips to a more modest 5 percent growth rate in 2011 (it's predicted by the IMF to hit 10.5) global commodity prices could plummet by 20 percent. Maybe we'll at least be able to fill up our gas tank again...

New River Loses a Dear Friend

Ashe County's boldest treasure is the New River and for the past half century, one of the river's best friends and strongest advocates has been Phil Hanes.

Hanes, 84, died on Sunday. His friends in his hometown of Winston-Salem may recall him more for his devotion to arts and culture, but here in the hills of North Carolina and southwest Virginia, his passion for the environment and the New will be his lasting legacy.

Uncivility has consequences for kids

Burke County is abuzz with news that the county's high schools are destined to lose accreditation at the end of June.

Factions on the school board have been squabbling rudely for several years and the bickering is now officially out of hand.

Does this mean all the high school students with useless diplomas will get their lost 13 years back?

First Amendment Alive in Alleghany

Alleghany County Commissioners have voted to keep praying, quietly. A majority of the commissioners, following the advice of their attorney, decided not to reinstate an opening prayer and instead stick with the moment of silence that they now observe before taking up business.

Forsyth Commissioners have been waging a costly battle for prayer recently after a federal judge ruled that the board's sectarian prayer violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.

With Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court still opening with a prayer, it's unlikely they'll be any definitive ruling on this practice for a few decades to come. However, it's heartening to see that Alleghany Commissioners recognize the problems that conducting government business with a sectarian prayer presents. Whether they admit it or not, continuing to offer prayers under the guise of official government business is establishing a religion.

According to the Alleghany News, before the vote Commissioner Larry Cox pointed out the passage from the Sermon on the Mount in which Christians were urged not to do as the hypocrites and pray on the street corners, but to offer their prayers in secret.

We find it interesting that the pro-out-loud prayer crowd at the Sparta meeting was not receptive to having the those particular red-letter words recited out loud.

Maybe they sent her to get an education...

A funny thing happened on the way to the Republican Caucus meeting for our own beloved Virginia Foxx last week.... she stumbled into the Democratic Caucus meeting and didn't take notice until she was already in the room ... surrounded by her Dem pals.

The Dutchess of Foscoe, always one to extol the virtues of personal responsiblity, blamed her wandering ways on a staffer for giving her bad directions.

Maybe the staffer sent their boss, the new co-chair of the Higher Education subcommittee, to the meeting for a reason. If she'd stuck around, she might have learned a thing or two.

Damn!

We're pleased to know that cussin' in public won't land you in the hoosegow anymore, thanks to a Superior Court judge in Chapel Hill. (It's still advisable to shy away from cussin' in front of Momma.)

We're still avoiding karaoke bars as singing off key in public will still get you a week in the stocks.

Oh yeah, we're nonpartisan

Late this afternoon, the Ashe County Chamber of Commerce sent out a "SPECIAL" email message to announce that Republican-elect Jonathan C. Jordan will be sworn at, err, sworn in on Saturday at the Taj Mahal in Jefferson.

We all knew that counselor Jordan is a member of the Chamber Board of Directors but we were a bit astonished that the Chamber has allowed its email list to be co-opted by a young fellow who still can't decide whether closing Mt. Jefferson State Natural Area is a bad thing. (We're guessing that Art Pope hasn't yet told him whether this is an acceptable proposal.)

Nonetheless, our new fearless leader, Mister Jordan, goes on in his Chamber-delivered message to quote from the Gospel of the Gipper: "As President Reagan said in his 1981 Inaugural Address, "The economic ills we suffer have come upon us over several decades. They will not go away in days, weeks or months, but they will go away."

We think we're supposed to be inspired by this, but we're just not feeling any tingles.

For sale: cage with bikini

We learn from the better-late-than-never local print media that a Superior Court judge has swatted down an apparently feeble challenge to West Jefferson's ETJ action last summer.

The Board of Aldermen pushed forward with extra-territorial jurisdiction despite some mighty angry residents who supposed the whole effort was nothing more than a communist land grab. Town leaders jumped on ETJ after rumors of an impending invasion of caged bikini dancers started swirling around town. If Art Pope and his pals get their way in the legislature, cities and towns across North Carolina will soon see their ability to use ETJ and annexation severely limited. Heaven forbid anyone actually plan for growth. Chaotic suburban sprawl seems to work so well.

Conversely, we're a little misty-eyed about the loss of caged bikini dancers. They could've added some life to Christmas in July.

We have an airport for the jobless

County Manager Dan McMillan recently sat down with the folks over at the Jefferson Post to go over his honey-do list for 2011.

Most amusing on the list: "updating the county website to include the airport."

We enjoy beating dead horses and think it's worth pointing out again that the county's Economic Development Commission website  remains empty. Perhaps actually providing information for prospective business would help out with the 9.9 percent unemployment rate more than including just the airport on the website.

Besides, we understand that the Vannoy boys have to park their fancy bi-plane down at the Wilkes Airport because the runway here at Ashe International is too short.

Got Yuan?

The Tea Party brawlers will take the Capitol by storm later this week and at the top o' the list for fixing is that pesky debt ceiling. The solution being pushed by Michelle Bachmann and her comrades is refusing to raise the debt ceiling.

No doubt they'll get some help from our pal Gini Foxx who has repeatedly voted against raising the debt ceiling.

Aside from starting to look like a rerun of that 1994 show, Gingrich v. Clinton, this has all the makings of apocalypse. Letting the federal government default is no whimsical matter.

That whole "full faith and credit" thing makes the world go round and keeps the banks open. We dare to speculate that the economy is in no condition to face a government shutdown until a political compromise is found (i.e. Obama finds something else to give away). And exactly which member of the Tea Party is going to pay those folks from Beijing when they come looking to claim the collateral for all that worthless debt papers they're holding?